I can´t speak for the RATP but the Navigo is a step in the direction of the Oyster Card. I believe they have plans to expand use of this card at some point in the future.

Probably not. The infrastructure cost to introduce it systemwide would be colossal in the middle of economic downturn.

Hopefully they're planning on supporting mobile payment system of some kind, including for non-European visitors.

Rather than deal with Octopus, Oyster, Navigo and so on, just have a NFC-enabled mobile app. which is the lingua franca for these kinds of transactions.

Seoul has a similar card system (T-money) which works great for visitors.
Discount for using, value never expires, etc.
Given Paris' many visitors, hope they're planning something!

I don't know that much about what Oyster is that is so superior, but from the little I've read, it seems virtually the same as the Navigo, so not sure what the complaint is. A plastic card you pay 5 euro for that you can then reload when you want. What's the difference. I know Navigo has some time limitations on the weekly pass and you can't use it just to pay for individual tickets as far as I know, but I don't know why that makes options in Paris awkward (if you buy paper tickets in a carnet instead of putting them on a card). You can always buy the Mobilis unlimited daily pass if you want in Paris if the Navigo doesn't suit your visit and you want to use it a lot one day.

I don't really know why Paris should spend a lot of money subsiding transportation for wealthy tourists.

Who said anything about subsidies?

Though Paris has a strong interest in attracting tourism and one of the attractions is an efficient, affordable transportation system, which is accessible to tourists as well.

The Chip and Pin cards that they require for things like the Velib isn't so tourist-friendly, at least American tourist-friendly.

"I don't really know why Paris should spend a lot of money subsiding transportation"

The whole point of the Oystercard is to cut subsidies by aggressively discouraging the sales of printed tickets - leading to a reduction in selling staff.

I haven't had any cause to deal with a London ticket seller, or use a ticket machine, in over 5 years: the Oystercard just replenishes itself from my bank account according to the principles I set when acquiring it.

I don´t know how many years you have been purchasing métro tickets flanneruk but the RATP sales staff has been cut to the bone in Paris, replaced by machines. Finding a service window has become problematic for many customers.

Parisian residents typically purchase annual passes (some employers participate) called Navigo which, for them, operates essentially the same as the Oyster card does for London residents. The primary difference is basically how tourists, or part-time users, pay for public transportation.

The Oyster card is practical and easy and I particularly like that the credit on the card does not expire. The métro solutions are more varied, less flexible (as with the Monday to Sunday ND offering), and can be confusing.

That´s why Fodor´s is here, a forum for those seeking help and venue for those willing to give it.

The issue is not the technology, it's the pricing policy. RATP doesn't cover as wide an area as London Transport has for much longer, therefore doesn't have (or doesn't feel it has) the same need to allow for a complex range of patterns of travel across different zones, at different times of day, on different days of the week, and so on, as London does.

So Paris doesn't have multi-day passes starting whenever you like, just one that suits regular commuters - for everybody else, in their view a carnet suffices, and presumably their present technologies for issuing and checking carnets suit them economically (machines already take money and print out the tickets anyway, so the staff savings issue is already dealt with. So it comes down to a question of whether it's worth investing in a lot of computer programming and additional technology to get over the inconvenience of asking people to carry bundles of card.

A bit oversimplified Patrick (yes there are multi-day passes starting whenever you like) but essentially Paris has the same style RFID sensors at the turnstiles as does London. Londoners use the Oyster card, Parisians use the Navigo.

There really should be no reason why the Navigo Découverte card (the tourist version of the Navigo card) could not be loaded with a specific fare such as the ticket t+ typically found in groups of 10 and called a carnet or any of the other pass options and subsequently used as an Oyster card is used.

Exactly why this has not yet been implemented I cannot say.

The idea that travellers to a major city are a nuissance to be tolerated is daft.

First off, consider the fact that tourists actually make public transit more profitable because, unlike commuters, they do a lot of their trips at non-peak times in the middle of the day. This is one of the primary problems that public transportation schemes in the US face--having to build sufficient capacity to handle the morning and afternoon commute, but then being stuck with more capacity than you need at all other times of the day. Tourists help even out that load (and in London, TFL explicitly attemps to do this by giving discounted fares for non-peak travel).

Second, a lot of travellers aren't tourists, but rather, folks in town on business. Recognizing that you have people in town for business, why not encourage them to use RATP rather than steering them toward taxis by making it cumbersome to use public transport?

Third, even locals are going to deviate from their routine from time to time. Why make it more difficult than it needs to be? The technology is already there.

Do Oyster and Octopus stimulate tube and bus travel?

I honestly don't know - and it wasn't the reason for introducing the cards. If use of cabs really is lower in London and HK than in Paris, there will be lots of reasons. Payment technology is likely to be around 999th in the list of them.

Getting the Tube is inherently more cumbersome than the Metro, and TfL's prime motive in streamlining bus ticketing (and the reason for Oyster clones on provincial English buses) has been road congestion: buses in general - and the chaos round bus stops in particular - are a serious cause of congestion throughout urban England, and smartcards have cut it immensely.

I really don't know of any smartcard ticketing system where tourists have mattered diddley squat in the business case for their introduction.

The idea of moving away from Oyster or Octopus to a technology relying on a toy most people don't have that costs at least £100 to acquire is the kind of absurdity only a politically illiterate male teenage technofreak from a country without proper public transport could take seriously even for a second.

No, not replace Oyster/Octopus. Complement it.

Just as Oyster/Octopus doesn't eliminate other forms of payment.

Why deal with people having to top up cards at kiosks if they can do it directly on their phones?